The Deadsingers glance at her in horror, raise warning hands. Too late.
Kinghammer meets her eyes. Her father meets her eyes.
‘I love you, Ice,’ he says.
As she holds his gaze, she watches the wights of the Empire eat his soul between one heartbeat and next. The monster that fills his body blinks, looks at her with the eyes of the hungry dead, and pulls her close.
Icecaller feels a sharp pain in her stomach, and watches her father’s hand withdraw, red and dripping. She has a moment to take it in. The broken tattoo, the Deadsingers recoiling. One of them is bodily dragging a shrieking Hawkspit with them, retreating into the cleft just ahead of the yowling teeth of the mob.
The first of the dead hits her like a punch, just above the kidney. She feels it lodge and settle, spreading like fever. Devouring. Her blood sings. She’s hungry. And angry. Furious. Her arms take a better grip on her shield. Lifts her spear. Absently, she watches her father’s body disappear into the depths, at the head of a howling mob, moving as if hunting. Stalking something down into the depths of the mountain.
He can wait. She has to find her sister. They all have to find her sister. A snarl tears its way down her spine as she throws herself into the mass of her brothers and sisters, and begins to run with them. She is pulled down through the Stump by a hundred eager hands. Her head sings with voices. They chase the sound of steel and screams. Bodies tumble into her path. She stabs, tears. Blood spatters her teeth. She laughs, her tongue hot with the fire ofother tongues. Distantly, the mountain thunders. The stone shudders. Rocks fall in great heavy fists. One catches her shoulder, breaks the bone. Her arm ripples with shapes, mouths, eyes that stretch. Her tattoos burn like a banked fire. Voices ahead. Her mind lurches towards them. Close, so close.
Panic in the tones, pitched and shouting. She pushes herself over obstacles. Splintered, charred, bladed and bent. A man reels towards her. She catches his stomach with the point of her spear, reaches into his screaming mouth and tears his cheek off. It slithers wetly down her fingers, which convulse with joy. She runs them over the broad oak side of a door, smiles at the red they leave.
A circle of pale faces swims in front of her, guarding a knot of children, all blades and bravado. A bearded boy with an axe, his free arm stretched defensively over the chest of the man next to him, a scream peeling off his lips. Icecaller swallows meat. Circles. Her spear moves light and lazily in the looped light, as her new brothers and sisters gather behind her. The small defensive circle hold their arms outstretched, placatory, mouthing something that swims slow through the thundering blood in her head, and is lost in the red of her thoughts. Icecaller knows them all. Quick, Roof, Steel.
In her way. All of them, in her fuckin’ way.
Behind them, small and tousled, scratched legs and scuffed feet, Nigh. Her head howls with relief. Icecaller howls with it. Her sister. Her sister. Her beautiful, treacherous, delicious sister.
Her legs lope closer. The circle in front of her contracts. Words fly past her in a gabble. The mountain shudders and booms. The air stinks of acid. Icecaller’s arms loosen and she charges. And if her tongue runs with other voices, does it matter? The hunger is hers. That buzzsaw, biting hunger. Then, she catches a flicker of movement. The beard and the axe from the left, a drawn blade from Steel on the right.
Icecaller’s shield snaps out, hooks the axe edge, lets it bite. She tugs, pulls out and up, drags it free from Roofkeeper’s startled hands. Twists, and snaps his arm below the elbow. Laughs. No one fiercer than the Kinghammer’s daughter.
Quickfish yells in fury and throws himself at her. She doesn’t expect it. Barely sees it coming. Feels his forehead crash into her face. Cartilage pops. The bridge and bone of her nose a smashed ruin. The voices in her blood exult.
She turns the spear, punches closed fist with the haft. Into the throat, once, twice, three times. Feels his windpipe collapse. Spits blood into his gasping face. Shrieks likes an eagle. No one faster than the Emperor’s daughter.
She’s still howling as Steelfinder’s sword takes her in the side, low and subtle under her shield, slipping in like a lover. The blood around it floats, billows, grows the ghosts of teeth and eyes and hands. Icecaller turns on the point of the blade to face Steel. And if she’s weeping, they’re not her tears. But the hunger is, that black wolf hunger.
The blade hits her again, above the first red mouth. Her spear is held too wide, her shield heavy from Roofkeeper’s axe. She lets them fall. Behind the blade, Steelfinder’s face, tear-stained and wracked with grief. Icecaller feels something slip inside her. For a moment Nigh’s screaming and she’s terrified for her baby sister. She wants to pick up her up. To take her.
To take her apart. Piece by piece by red little piece.
And if she’s praying, they’re not her prayers. But the hunger is, that fat wasp hunger. It fills her head as Steel says something to her, and leans in to push her off the blade. Icecaller sees her moment, and strikes.
The voices rejoice as she pulls Steel into her. Sliding along the blade like a tongue. Taking it deep. Hauling Steelfinder off balance, until her throat tilts against Icecaller’s teeth. Until Icecaller’s mouth closes on muscle as her hand pushes Steelfinder’s chin up and away. Bites down to blood, hot, sweet and flowing. She swallows and bites again. No one sharper than the Emperor’s hunger.
Steelfinder’s body falls. Icecaller lets it slip in gobbets from her lips. The flesh hangs red and wet. She smiles through it. Crouching, she beckons her sister with a hundred hungry fingers. Then from behind her, curses. Shouts of pain and rage from her newsiblings. A trio reel into the room in a mess of fighting bodies. A wrapped fist rising and falling, something brass and screaming between the fingers. Sigils blazing with sulphur and saltpetre. And rags and ribbons, red, and yellow and red again.
Shipwright. Shroudweaver. Skinpainter.
Icecaller’s brothers and sisters surround them, fighting with blade, tooth and nail for the Empire. Shroudweaver batters them back with concussive force, a slight man, his right hand wrapped in red, sulphur stink following him like a plague. Behind Shroudweaver, a woman like the prow of a ship. Shipwright, who moves like a wolf, a hammer, a coursing stag. Stringing the two, like a ragged flag, Skinpainter, their eyes wild, skin running with black and red ink. The crowd in front of them roils.
Limbs buffet her, knocking her off balance. While she’s distracted, Roofkeeper falls back with Steelfinder’s body. Icecaller’s sister vanishes in the press, and she howls in rage, staggering as the room brightens around her.
Gold light. Gold light on the brows of her brothers and sisters. Their voices falling silent, red threads wrapped around them. She turns to fight with the anger of a thousand bodies, but there’s a pressure on her skull and a twining in her heart. A firm hand grips her blade. A fist smashes her jaw. As the light fails, the last thing she feels is a wash of searing heat and a voice like bellows-brass.
75
REND
Stop. Take a moment, a breath. Watch this horror unfold once again. Slide back in time to the moment where Skinpainter feels Belltoller die, a ripping like shorn cloth as she’s torn from the world. An acid edge to the air and then, gone. Skinpainter knows that behind them her body is falling. Absently, they hear voices, screams. But there is no time to linger, no space to give to grief. The sky is wide and swallowing. The wreck of the storm they summoned lists over the Barrowlands, falling apart as the guiding mind of the Belltoller dissolves into nothing. The wind drops, gusts, tears at Skinpainter’s ribbons, at red and yellow robes burnt to blackness from calling down the lightning. Their tendons underneath lit with fire, fraying as surely as the last scraps of material wound around their straining arms. They spit. This body is a tool, and they’ll use it until it breaks, if needed. The alternative is unthinkable. Crowkisser cannot win. The mountain cannot be breached. They tighten their grip, grit their teeth against the aches blossoming under their skin and spread broad hands across the shifting sky, to paint it red and black and red again. Geometries opening pathways for the lightning, luring it to the ground along thrown angles, like water down a rill.
That bitch had lied to them. She had come with a soft face and wide-eyes and lied to them. They’d known she would bring death, and she’s brought it by the score. They haven’t seen so much blood in years. All across the Barrowlands, people they love die. Crowkisser was stronger than she had any right to be. The kind of power that flowed out of her shouldn’t be possible. It had an alien feel to it, something damp and yearning. And strong. Crowkisser had met them, breath for breath, spell for spell, andthe battle had turned into something worse. A clash of wills, like the old days. The bodies below were barely human anymore. Just a way to keep score. It turned their stomach. By any count, both sides were losing, the Barrowlands thick with slaughter.
It was dangerous, this butchery, ringing out like a bell to the ancient dead of the Empire. Each cut brought them closer to catastrophe, like slaking a dog’s mouth with blood and expecting it not to bite. Absently, Skinpainter watches lightning sear the flesh from another huddle of grey-cloaked wretches. It’s too late now. This isn’t the war they’ve chosen, but it’s the war they’re in. There are two options – fight, or die.
